with all of the quarantine stuff going on , I’ve had extra time to expand my athletic horizons. From “prison”’ style training with chains and kettlebells on a steep hill to mountain biking. I’ve found that I want to become a better all around athlete. I’ve decided I may even sign up for a 5k in the fall. With that being said , I’m also kinda vain in that I love the muscle mass I’ve put on from powerlifting. I know that this is all going to depend on the individual , but do you think that there’s a generic and vague line that one would cross where muscle mass starts to deteriorate ? Maybe it’s in the amount of minutes someone is doing cardio or something like
that ? Keep in mind I will still be barbell training as well , just with much more auto regulation.
I’m not really sure if you’re asking “how much is too much cardio before I lose muscle mass” - but the answer to that is we really don’t know for trained lifters. We know that in most untrained folks, up to 30 minutes of moderate intensity steady state cardio 3x/wk doesn’t reduce strength or hypertrophy improvements, however we expect to see a broad range of responses to a given training protocol too.
Overall, I wouldn’t worry about training so much that you get too fit to carry a lot of muscle.
That’s pretty much what I’m asking yes hahah sorry I guess that would have been way easier to say.